Sompoton

Sompoton is a traditional Kadazan music instruments for the Dusun tribes in Sabah. Traditionally it was from Kampung Tikolod, Tambunan. It is now prevalent among Dusuns and Muruts. It is made of a double raft of eight bamboo pipes inserted into a gourd. Inside the gourd, seven of the pipes have small polod palm lamellae or sodi inserted into their sides and kept in place by beeswax or sopinit.

The eighth soundless pipe is stopped up with sopinit. The player blows and sucks air through the gourd mouth-piece to activate the sodi. The musical sound produced can be likened to a cross between the sounds from a conventional mouth organ and a bagpipe, minus the latter's shrillness. Often it is played solo, for personal expression. If you are interest on this traditional Kadazan Dusun music instruments, you can visit any handicraft centre or Tamu in Sabah.

The sompoton is the free-reed mouth organ of Sabah in northeastern Borneo. It is played by the Kadasan and Dusun peoples, and is still quite common. The sompoton has a gourd wind chamber from which extend 8 pipes arranged in two rows. There are bamboo reeds in seven of these pipes only, and three of these pipes do not have sound holes and are played by closing and opening the tops of the pipes with fingers of the right hand. The sumpoton can be played with the pipes pointing up, as is done with smaller instruments, or with the pipes pointing either sideways or down with larger instruments. The instruments range in size from 6 inches to 3 feet in length, with the average size of just over 1 foot.